Swing and miss

Cubs face few new options as team whiffs on Wrigley rehab plan

Even before Friday's first pitch at Wrigley Field, the 2011 season was shaky for the Chicago Cubs both on the field and off, where the team's owners struck out on their latest proposal to have public funds help refurbish the rickety ballpark.

Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel last week said using tax dollars from the city to rehab Wrigley was “a non-starter,” following an ill-fated attempt by Cubs owners in November to get the cash-strapped state to pony up $300 million in financing to renovate the 97-year-old ballpark.

In only its second season of ownership, the Ricketts family finds itself stuck. Confronted with fewer ways to wring additional money from the ballpark, a big payroll and an increasingly disgruntled fan base, the team is under pressure to generate new revenue. With no taxpayer option on the table, the responsibility for renovating Wrigley appears to fall to the Ricketts, who bought the team in 2009 from Tribune Co. for $845 million and whose debt load of $583 million, according to Forbes, is among the highest in Major League Baseball.

Without remodeling projects costing an estimated $400 million or more, a proposed multilevel building on a triangle-shaped parcel along Clark Street seems to be the main revenue-enhancing improvement on the table, but the family, led by team Chairman Tom Ricketts, has released few details on its plans.

The Cubs are not likely to find a solution anytime soon. After 102 years without a World Series championship and 65 years without even a shot at one, the legions of Cubs fans are voicing resentment over steady price increases.

Max Waisvisz, president of Chicago-based Gold Coast Tickets, says he has plenty of Cubs tickets that aren't attracting buyers. “The Cubs have the highest prices in baseball, and they keep raising them and adding new price categories,” Mr. Waisvisz says. Opening Day tickets that used to fetch $125 weren't moving this year at $59, and upper-deck seats with a face value of $27 to $30 were still available a day before the game at $35.

In addition, television ratings in 2010 plunged 32% for games on WGN-TV/Channel 9 and 40% for games on Comcast SportsNet. Lower ratings over an extended period would hamper the team's ability to raise its lucrative broadcast and cable rights fees.

Fans like Chicagoan Byron Clarke are less willing to shell out money to see a mediocre team. Mr. Clarke attended more than 10 games last season but doubts he will see that many this year. “It's difficult to pay $50 or $60 a game and watch Alfonso Soriano drop fly balls. At some point, you just get your group of buddies and go to a bar to save money,” he says.

EMPTY SEATS

Attendance at Wrigley fell 3.3% last year to 3.1 million and has slipped 7.2% from a record 3.3 million in 2008, the last year the team made the playoffs. Attendance for all of Major League Baseball has declined 7% since 2008, and the cross-town White Sox have slid 12.3%, to 2.2 million.

After seeing rows of empty seats late last season, the Cubs are scrambling to sell tickets for 2011, offering 13-game packages that included marquee matchups against the New York Yankees and White Sox. In February, the Cubs added lower-priced six-game packages.

“We have the largest season-ticket holder base in team history, and we're still on track to hit over 3 million fans for the eighth consecutive year,” says Wally Hayward, Cubs executive vice-president and chief marketing officer. The team does not disclose the number of season-ticket holders but says it has a waiting list of more than 100,000.

Even with more fans, a quick fix for Wrigley Field remains elusive and the charm of the ballpark actually works against it from a revenue standpoint. Signage is kept to a minimum inside the park and full naming rights, which helped the White Sox make stadium improvements, have drawn a cool response from potential sponsors, which fear a fan backlash.

Recent less-costly makeovers at other ballparks provide a likely road map for the Cubs. The Boston Red Sox organization spent $285 million of its own money over 10 years adding seats and other amenities to 99-year-old Fenway Park. The $250-million renovation of Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium in 2009 included many enhancements like restaurants while adding only five new suites.

University of Chicago sports economist Allen Sanderson says the Cubs' proposal, which called for renovations to be spread over three to five years while the team continued to play at Wrigley, was off-base in the belief that pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into an old stadium would produce a first-class facility.

“I like Wrigley Field, and it's a great place to see a ballgame, but it's a dump. If you spend $300 million to renovate it, it's still an old ballpark,” he says, adding that the team management should develop a long-term strategy.

The more urgent priority, Mr. Sanderson says, should be to improve the team.